Sekar Kathire­san show­cas­es his­toric mon­key da­ta in hunt for a once-and-done gene edit­ing ap­proach to pre­vent heart at­tacks

In a first for CRISPR — a field that’s seen quite a few his­toric moves in the past cou­ple of years — sci­en­tists have slashed cho­les­terol and lipid lev­els in mon­keys us­ing a tech­nique known as base edit­ing, gen­er­at­ing cru­cial proof-of-con­cept for both the biotech be­hind the ex­per­i­ment and a key part­ner.

Verve Ther­a­peu­tics de­signed two sim­i­lar ex­per­i­ments to test whether they can re­pro­duce pro­tec­tive mu­ta­tions in a pair of genes us­ing an ade­nine base ed­i­tor, which pre­cise­ly al­ters a cho­sen A to a G in the genome. CEO and co-founder Sekar Kathire­san pre­sent­ed the re­sults at a vir­tu­al keynote for the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ci­ety for Stem Cell Re­search over the week­end.

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